Awake, He Dreams
by wbss21
Summary: Goku and the rest had finally gone home for the night after spending the entirety of the day and a better part of the evening here at Capsule Corp, going over again and again the plans and strategies for the coming tournament. Some time during the night, Vegeta had disappeared.


**Awake, He Dreams**

 **Chapter 1:**

Bulma breathes out in relief as she closes the front door, locking it and turning quietly back into the house.

Goku and the rest had finally gone home for the night after spending the entirety of the day and a better part of the evening here at Capsule Corp, going over again and again the plans and strategies for the coming tournament.

Some time during the night, Vegeta had disappeared.

He'd hardly spoken during the course of the conversation, a huge loss, considering the brilliance of Vegeta's strategic mind, and each time Bulma had glanced over at him, she hadn't been able to help noticing how distracted and troubled he looked, and it had been concerning her deeply for hours now.

Since he'd finally gotten up and left, shortly after Goku had revealed to them how he'd promised Frieza that they would revive him with the Dragon Balls should their universe win the tournament, Bulma had nearly been crawling out of her own skin, wanting everyone to leave so she could go and see to her husband.

Goku, as well meaning and pure hearted as he was, could be painfully, even at times cruelly oblivious to the effect his actions could have on others. And Bulma knew none had born the brunt of that thoughtlessness more over the years than Vegeta. Goku left her husband in a state of agonizing doubt and suffering so often, had unintentionally driven Vegeta into a spiraling state of depression so commonly, that more than once Bulma had considered barring her oldest friend from their home altogether.

It was hopeless to expect Goku to ever learn or change, or to even realize the impact he was having on Vegeta. Those things just didn't occur to him.

This latest episode, recruiting Frieza to fight on their team, expecting Vegeta to be okay with that...

It had been difficult for Bulma to even look Goku in the face during the course of the night. He'd been so unforgivably blasé, so unaware of what a travesty it was, to ask that of her husband.

But then, Goku never knew as she did the true details of how Frieza had made Vegeta suffer from early childhood, well into his adult years. Goku knew nothing of the depth of her husbands misery and despair at the hands of that monster.

It had taken years of building trust between them before Vegeta had been willing to even reveal the smallest part of what he'd endured during the first thirty years of his life at Frieza's hands, and even still, Bulma knows, she didn't know close to everything.

What she did had been enough to keep her awake countless nights, locked away in their bathroom, trying to muffle her broken sobs behind palms pressed to her mouth. She didn't want Vegeta to know how upset it made her, because she knew then it would only make him more upset, and that he would then close off from her, wouldn't share any more with her, and she knew how unhealthy that was for him. To hold onto all that pain, to lock it away and never let anyone help him, never let anyone share the weight of it.

He never cried though.

None of what he had been subjected to had ever once, that she knew, wrung tears from his eyes. None of the savage, daily beatings he'd endured at the hands of Frieza and his top men, none of the forced periods of starvation, days and weeks on end when he'd been made to go without food or water, none of the countless, sickening humiliations he'd suffered, the insults and degradations heaped upon him in front of the only two subjects he had left, made to kneel, made to profess loyalty to another, to pledge his life and power to serve the one who had wiped out his entire race, had murdered his own flesh and blood and destroyed his very world.

The guilt she feels still for all the times she had yelled at him for being so uptight and self-conscious is sometimes too much to bear.

She suspects even now that more had been done to Vegeta than he'd ever spoken of, far more. Things she suspected had traumatized him in ways he refused to acknowledge but which she could see in him all the same. But she knew better than to try and make him reveal anything he wasn't ready to. If he ever was ready, he would tell her. She knows that.

Only sometimes he was wound so tight, she feared he might explode, and it was always such an effort to coax him back to calm.

In all the years they had been together, it was only once that she'd seen him cry, and then it had been only silent tears slipping from his eyes, down his cheeks. No heaving sobs or fractured breaths. Just tears from his eyes as he'd confessed to her his guilt and shame in having failed to protect his own people from Frieza's destruction, failing to prevent his own father's death, and failing to, after all of that, revenge himself and his people upon Freiza by ending his life in battle.

Even in being given a second chance at it, again, Goku had swooped in at the last moment and stolen it from him again.

It was too much. She knew it was too much. The very real possibility, maybe even probability that their universe would be wiped from existence, and now this, having to fight alongside his greatest tormentor.

Bulma doesn't hesitate in making her way straight to their bedroom, checking in quickly on Trunks on the way there, seeing he's asleep and safe in his bed before moving on.

She can only pray that Vegeta is there, and when she opens the bedroom door and spots him sitting there on their bed, Bulla held in his arms, she lets go a breath she hadn't even realized she'd been holding.

He doesn't look up as she steps into the room, closing the door softly behind her. His eyes stay fixed on their daughter, sleeping soundly in his hold as he gently rocks her.

"... Did they go?" He finally asks as she comes to stand beside him.

"Mmmhmm." She answers, reaching out and running her fingers through his hair, massaging them over his scalp.

"It's about time." He says, a note of irritation in his voice.

Only he doesn't pull away when she sits down beside him, putting her arm around his waist, leaning her head on his shoulder.

"How is she?" She asks quietly, reaching out her free hand and brushing Bulla's curls back off her forehead.

"Trouble. I only just got her to shut up and go to sleep." Vegeta answers gruffly, but Bulma knows him well enough now to hear the affection in his voice. He loves Bulla in a way she's never seen him love anyone. Not more. She knows her husband loves her and Trunks just as deeply. But with their daughter, there's an openness to his love which is new. He dotes on her, pampers her even. In every way, she's his little girl, and with her, for the first time since Bulma has known Vegeta, he isn't ashamed or afraid to show the love he feels for another person.

She hadn't been sure she would ever see that change in him.

Each day she observes it is like a miracle unto itself.

"Do you think I'm a bad man Bulma?"

She's shaken from her wistful thoughts by the sound of her husbands voice, and she looks up from Bulla to him. He still has his face turned towards their daughter, but his eyes are far away now, not really looking at her.

"What?" She asks, taken aback.

She sees his frame tense, his features growing tight, brow furrowed in a now familiar look of anxiety. She's never met a man who suffers more over his own emotions than Vegeta. Never, strangely, met a man so sensitive, despite the way he hides the depth of those feelings. Every one is like the weight of the world on his shoulders, and some days she wonders how he can continue to get up and stand.

At last he turns to her, his eyes open and plain, filled with naked fear, and that, more than anything, sets Bulma on edge. He rarely exposes himself like that. Hardly ever.

"Vegeta..." she starts, frightened.

"I'm going to kill him." He says, voice hardly a whisper.

Bulma blinks.

"Kill who?" She forces herself to ask.

He can't mean Goku. She knows they've had their differences, to say the least, but...

He looks away, back to their daughter, his arms visibly tightening around her tiny frame before abruptly lifting her up and hugging her against his broad chest.

He leans his face down, burying his lips into her soft hair, kissing her.

For long seconds he doesn't move from that position.

"Vegeta," Bulma finally starts, resting a hand on his shoulder.

He's shaking slightly, she realizes, and her fear only worsens.

"How could he do this to me?" Vegeta finally says, his voice strained and thin. "Knowing I can't... knowing for... for you, and Trunks, a... and Bulla, I can't..."

He stops, lowering his face against the top of their daughters head.

"... You can't what?" Bulma at last prompts. "Vegeta, you can't what?"

"I can't not fight." He finally says, lifting his face and looking at her. "I can't... if I don't fight, it's the same as me forfeiting your lives. You, and Trunks and Bulla. But I _can't_... I can't fight with _him_. I _cannot_!"

Oh, Bulma thinks. That's it. Of course that's it.

Her hand squeezes over his shoulder.

"I know." She says quietly. "I know that's why you left early."

She sees her husbands jaw clench before abruptly he stands, moving towards the crib and laying Bulla gently down in it.

It always astounds Bulma, to see a man who she knows has been and maybe even still is capable of such immense violence, able at the same time to be so gentle and soft.

Even having accepted her marriage to Vegeta, even having accepted him, and acknowledging how much he's changed over the years, Bulma knows too, none of her friends, except maybe Goku, really understand just how complex her husband is. How many facets there are to him, and have always been.

That gentility was always there. Underneath the cold, uncaring facade, Bulma had seen it in him from the moment they first met. It was what had initially attracted her to him. Seeing that immense duality, seeing how someone could be both so brutal and dismissive, and at the same time, have in them a capacity for kindness and love as deep as she knew he did.

It wasn't something he had learned or developed over time. It was just something he had learned to accept as being okay within himself. Something he had learned was alright to acknowledge and be.

"Are you alright?" Bulma asks when Vegeta doesn't move or speak for nearly a full minute.

She sees him shift, his hands curled over the gate of Bulla's crib, his head bowing down.

"... No." He says finally.

"Vegeta," Bulma calls out to him softly. "... come here."

It takes a long moment more, but finally her husband turns, coming back to her.

He says nothing as he sinks back to the bed beside her, doesn't protest when she wraps her arms around him and pulls him against her side, pressing his face down against her shoulder.

If they were in public, she knows, Vegeta would pretend to be put upon and irritated with her for pawing all over him.

Things were different between them behind closed doors. That was something nobody else knew. Vegeta could be so sweetly affectionate with her. He loved to touch her, and hold onto her. Sometimes, they would just sit together for hours, wrapped around each other, saying nothing, content simply in each others company.

And sometimes, he just needed someone to hold onto him. It had taken a long time for them to reach this point. When he would accept physical comfort from her.

His hands reach up, thick fingers curling into the material of her shirt, clinging to it.

"... Why did you ask me if you were a bad man before?" Bulma finally forces herself to ask. She didn't doubt her husband. Not anymore. But she worried about him. Worried that sometimes, his swirling, powerful emotions could become too much. That all the trauma he had suffered in his life would come crashing down, and he would... would lash out in some way. Not because he was possessed of an evil heart. Bulma didn't think, even at his worst, that he ever _was_ evil. But because he'd never learned properly how to deal with what had been done to him. All he'd known all his life before her was violence and loss.

For a long time, Vegeta doesn't answer, and Bulma tries to be patient despite her increasing concern.

"... I'll kill Frieza." He says at last, and Bulma can feel his frame vibrating with tension. "I won't be able to keep myself from sending him back to hell. But... Kakarot says we need him. As if he thinks we can't _win_ without him. How can he... between him and myself, and Gohan, how can he think that? We can win without that bastard. I won't... I won't fight at his side. I _can't_."

Bulma shakes her head, her eyes stinging at the agony she hears in her husbands voice.

"How does that make you a bad man Vegeta?" She asks after a moment.

"... What if I kill him and the rest of us really aren't enough to win this thing?" He asks, lifting his face and looking at her. "I would forfeit your lives for my pride and the pride of my people. Does that not make me a bad man?"

Bulma laughs, shaking her head, and Vegeta stares at her in confusion.

"Vegeta, I would be shocked, and not in a good way, if you had been alright with fighting alongside that son of a bitch. After everything he's done to you and your people, how could you ever be expected to fight at his side? It doesn't make you a bad man. It makes you a sane man."

Vegeta looks back at her for a long moment, as if he isn't quite able to process her words, and Bulma smiles, reaching out and cupping his cheek in her hand.

"I can't tell you what to do Vegeta." She says. "But I can tell you that you should follow your heart. Do you believe you can win without Frieza's help?"

He looks away then, jaw tightening.

"... Kakarott doesn't think so..."

"I didn't ask what Goku thinks Vegeta." She injects. "I asked what you think. You don't answer to what Goku thinks or wants all the time, do you?"

That predictably wrings a reaction out of him, his face twisting in anger as he pulls back, looking at her with affront.

" _No_!" He snarls. "If anything that low-class idiot should be answering to _my_ discretion. I have more experience in actual, strategic warfare than he does. And whether he chooses ever to acknowledge it or not, he is _my_ subject. I am his _prince_ , and were Vegetasei still in existence, he would be taking orders from _me_."

"Okay, okay big guy. Calm down." Bulma laughs. "I just wanted to make sure you were paying attention. Look, in seriousness, I want to know, do you think you can win without Frieza?"

Bulma watches the tension drain slightly out of her husbands shoulders, a vague embarrassment floating across his features for his outburst.

"I know we can." He says after a long moment. "And Kakarot is a fool for involving that disgusting lizard to begin with. He may think he knows Frieza because of the battles he's fought with him, but he doesn't. Frieza will betray us in an instant, the first opportunity that arises for him, and we shouldn't be wasting our energy worrying about needing to put him down when that happens. We need to be focused on the matches with the fighters from the other universes."

That was what Bulma had thought the moment Goku had suggested bringing Frieza onto the team, and hearing Vegeta convey the same only reinforces that belief now. Her husband was right. It was a foolish plain, from beginning to end.

"Then you should tell that to Goku and try to convince him to forget Frieza."

Vegeta scoffs, turning away.

"He won't listen to me. None of them ever do." He shakes his head. "The only thing I can do is take Frieza out before he can cause us more harm. Before the tournament begins."

Bulma pauses, a knot of apprehension forming in her gut.

"... Do you think you can?" She asks hesitantly.

Vegeta scowls.

"Of course I can. I've grown infinitely stronger since he came back to life the first time, while he's been doing nothing but languishing in hell all this time. He'll be no match for me."

"I know that Vegeta," Bulma is quick to say, knowing she's unintentionally bruised his pride. "I just... I worry that you may be too emotionally effected by him. When you get really upset, sometimes it throws you off. You know this."

"I _won't_ be." He snaps, standing from the bed and stepping back, staring at her with plain hurt in his eyes.

Instantly Bulma feels sorry, though she knows too it had to be said. For his sake, and all of theirs. Frieza wasn't just some nameless, detached opponent for Vegeta to face. Wasn't just another enemy to be stopped even. He was her husbands life long tormentor. The man who had stolen him away from his father and his home, and forced him into a life of unwilling servitude under the threat of death and worse. The man who had tortured and humiliated him, and eradicated everything he had ever known or loved.

It would be nothing short of a miracle if Vegeta were able to remove himself from any emotional reaction and simply put Frieza away.

If Bulma was being honest, she didn't think he could.

"Are you sure?" She presses. "Maybe you should talk to Goku, see if he..."

Vegeta cuts her off with a snarl, and before she can get another word out, he's storming from the room.

Okay, she thinks, so maybe that wasn't the best thing to say.

It was just that she's worried. She knows, reasonably, that her husband is more powerful at this point than Frieza. Certainly she thinks he's likely always been a more skilled fighter. But she's seen Vegeta lose his cool too many times in battle, and seen him pay dearly for it, for it not to be a concern of hers.

She sighs, pushing herself from the bed and heading out after him.

He may think he wants to be alone now, but it isn't what he likely needs.

Unsurprisingly, she finds him on the rooftop terrace of their home, sitting out on the edge of the railing with his legs dangling over. She knows he can fly. That there's no danger of him falling. It still scares her half to death when she catches him like this.

"Vegeta, come sit with me here, won't you?" She calls to him, standing by the patio furniture.

He doesn't respond, continuing to sit with his back to her, his elbows rested on his knees.

He reminds her then of some little kid who's had his feelings hurt, and her heart sinks.

She hadn't meant to wound him like that. Bringing Goku up had just been her trying to remind him that he wasn't alone. That he he friend, and that he could ask them for help. But she should have known better in that moment.

It seemed like Vegeta was always scrambling and struggling just to keep up with the younger Saiyan, and she knew how much that truth shamed and hurt him.

Bulma gives up hoping he'll come back off the edge after a few moments, instead making her way to him.

"At least come down off that thing, you crazy." She pleads.

"I won't fall." He shoots angrily, still not looking at her.

"I know. But it would still make me feel better." She answers.

She hears him growl low in his throat, his hands coming down to rest of the edge of the railing, squeezing down. The metal gives an ominous groan.

"You treat me like a child." He accuses.

"Only when you act like one." Bulma snaps back, feeling her own temper momentarily flare.

He says nothing to that, continuing to remain where he is.

Again Bulma sighs, rolling her eyes skyward.

Alright, this isn't going to be easy then. She should have known it wouldn't be, not with her husband being in such a vulnerable state. He always grew somehow even more withdrawn when he felt helpless.

She steps forward, leaning her arms onto the rail beside him.

For a few minutes, they're both quiet, just looking out over the city's shining lights.

"You know I believe in you, right?" She finally says.

"Tch." He scoffs in response, folding his arms over his chest.

"I mean it." She says, turning her head to look at him. "Even if you don't always believe in yourself. And don't tell me that doesn't sometimes happen." She adds quickly, cutting him off. "I know you well enough to know that Vegeta. Even if you sometimes think you'll never catch up to Goku, I know you can. I know you can become stronger than him even."

Again he scoffs, turning his face aside.

Bulma frowns, her heart heavy.

"Aren't you stronger than him right now?"

Her husbands frame is so tense, she can see him shaking slightly with it.

"... He always finds a way to be better." He says quietly after a moment, and God, he sounds so sad about it, Bulma feels her eyes begin to sting. "Even if I'm stronger at a base level, if we fought now, he would still win with that Kaio-Ken thing of his. Like he did the first time we..."

His voice trails off, and she sees his hand reach up to his face, wiping quickly at his eyes before falling away.

"... When my world still existed, my father was king because he and generations of our family before him were always the strongest among our race. Always the most powerful warriors. My father, when I was born, had been the most powerful Saiyan in all our recorded history."

He pauses, looking out, seeming, for a moment, lost in thought.

"He had a battle rating of twelve thousand when I was born. My greatest goal in the first years of my life was to someday equal him in strength." A bitter, humorless laugh escapes Vegeta's lips. "I was born with a battle rating of five hundred. That determined me to be a gifted prodigy. My father told me early on I was destined to become the greatest warrior in our people's history, and that I believed. I was already stronger than my father had ever been by the age of ten. No other of our race, none of the elites even, could come close to me in power. I was so _certain_..."

Again he reaches up, wiping at his eyes, and Bulma realizes with a start that he's crying.

"To be outdone, continually outpaced by a lower class warrior... to be _inferior_ to a lower class warrior... it is not simply a matter of individual pride. Were Vegetasei still in existence, and my people were to see me be so out classed, they would no longer be capable of perceiving me as their leader. They would be _ashamed_ of a prince who could not match the strength of a commoner. The first in my line to be outdone by a lower-class. To be outdone by _anyone_."

Vegeta had never spoken about this before. Not like this. Not with such... honestly.

For a moment, Bulma feels like she can't breathe.

She'd never even thought, never realized what it was really like for Vegeta. She'd always just assumed it was his wounded pride, why it bothered him so much that Goku was more powerful. She'd never even considered the political implications, or the damage to his sense of self.

It was so easy for her to forget sometimes that Vegeta was of royal lineage. That he was a genuine, legitimate prince. A man who had been born to rule over an entire planet, an entire race of people. Had been expected to.

She always just thought of him as her husband. As her family.

She didn't think about how what Vegeta had been raised to believe and expect of himself so clashed and contradicted where he was now and who he had ended up as. A husband and a father of two young children, living in an upscale, but still suburban neighborhood. Living a life of more or less anonymity, with no real authority over any particular group of people, political or otherwise.

" _He won't listen to me. None of them ever do_."

His words come back to her then, the depth of their meaning finally hitting her full.

A king, or a prince, was a person in charge. A person who would be and expected to be listened to and appeased. Who expected complete, unquestioning obedience.

Vegeta had none of that among her friends. At best, he was tolerated. At worst, he was openly sneered at and even excluded among some of them. The latter group never really got invited to Capsule Corp any more though. Outside of their own family, only Goku and his really seemed genuinely fond of Vegeta. And maybe Krillin. Genuinely thought of him as a friend. The others were polite, of course, even kind. But they never really talked to her husband. Never tried to hang out with him.

And there was no deference, no fealty or anything like that. And Goku was a Saiyan, Gohan and Goten half Saiyan. By right of heritage and culture, they should have been subservient to Vegeta. But that dynamic just simply didn't exist between her husband and the others, and never would.

Bulma had never allowed herself to contemplate how hard that must be for Vegeta. How every day it must have only served to remind him of how everything he had ever been promised he had instead been so heartlessly robbed of.

"For all my failures already, my father would be ashamed to call me his son." Vegeta says suddenly, his voice hardly more than a whisper. "How much greater would that shame be were I to fight alongside the man who murdered him, who destroyed our world and our people? I can't do that Bulma. I cannot."

Bulma shakes her head, wiping at her own eyes, heartbroken.

"Your father wouldn't be ashamed of you Vegeta. He would be so proud of you. God, don't you know that? He would be so proud of everything you've overcome, everything you've achieved."

"And what have I achieved?" Vegeta snaps suddenly, angrily. "What have I done that my father would be so proud of?!"

"Made a family, for one thing!" Bulma nearly shouts at him. "And helped save the fucking world, hell, scratch that, helped save the whole fucking universe, and more than once, I might add! If that isn't something any parent would be proud of, than nothing is."

Vegeta only looks away at her declaration, going quiet.

"Hey," Bulma says, reaching up, touching the tips of her fingers to his cheek, turning his face slowly towards her. "I mean it. I believe in you. You just need to have a little more belief in yourself Vegeta."

He stares back at her for long seconds then, saying nothing, and it tears her apart as she watches silent tears slip down his cheeks.

He turns away, burying his face in his hands.

"I don't know what to do." He mutters, his voice thick with desperation and despair. "What do I do? What should I do?"

"You're asking me?" Bulma blinks, nearly shocked.

It wasn't often Vegeta asked her opinion about anything. Let alone something this... important.

He only nods miserably.

Bulma hesitates, uncertain and worried about saying the wrong thing.

"Honestly, I think you should kill Frieza." She finally just blurts, figuring a wishy washy answer isn't what her husband is looking for. He never gave half-assed answers, and neither would she.

His hands drop and he turns, looking at her intently, like he can't quite believe her words.

She only smiles.

"You don't need that bastard to win Vegeta. Goku may not be sure, but I am, and I think deep down you are too. He's evil. He shouldn't even exist. And he's going to turn on you one way or another. You don't need that hanging over your heads when you have so much else to worry about. Kill him."

Vegeta swallows thickly, silent for a long moment.

"You really mean that." He says, realizing her sincerity.

"I do." She says, and she leans in suddenly, pressing a kiss to his temple before taking his face in her hands. "Come back inside, alright? It's getting late. We should go to bed."

For an instant, she doesn't know what he'll do, his expression unreadable as he looks searchingly back at her, and she's afraid in those long seconds that he'll take off again, like he always used to, disappear for hours, days, weeks, even months like he used to.

Only he doesn't.

Only silently works himself around, back onto the patio, slipping from the railing to solid ground.

She takes his hands, the two of them standing, looking one another in the eyes.

It's always comforted her, in some strange way, that Vegeta was her exact same height. Gave her a sense of equal footing with him.

The others used to tease him about it. About how _small_ he was. Yamcha especially. It used to anger Vegeta so much.

But they'd stopped that a long time ago now.

Vegeta may have been petite, but none of them had a bigger spirit, a bigger will to succeed.

And anyway, Vegeta could have smacked all of them around like rag dolls, if he'd really wanted to. All the more humiliating for them, to get trounced by a "little guy", as Yamcha used to say.

He was her big little guy, and she loved him.

She tells him so then, leaning her forehead against his, whispering it to him quietly.

He closes his eyes, and because they're alone, he whispers back the same to her.

/

 **AN: So, I'm not sure if I should continue this beyond a one shot. If you think so, let me know, and let me know your thoughts in general on the story! And as always, thank you so much for reading guys!**


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